


the warmth rang true inside these bones

by slow-smiles (the_irish_mayhem)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Past Baelfire | Neal Cassidy/Emma Swan, Past Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Milah, Season/Series 04, mentions of past relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 18:24:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4635576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_irish_mayhem/pseuds/slow-smiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She can’t always tell him. Emma Swan has only so many grand declarations that she can make, but she can at least do this. If she can’t tell him, at least she can show him.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Captain Swan + issues with physical intimacy.<br/>Takes place nebulously in early S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the warmth rang true inside these bones

**Author's Note:**

> Because damn you can't tell me Emma was cool right of the bat with cute little cheek kisses and stuff. This fic grew out of my desire to explore that.

> _We stood  
>  _ _Steady as the stars in these woods_

When Emma was with Neal, she loved public displays of affection. She had loved holding hands with him when they would stroll in the park, loved kissing on public benches on a sun-drenched afternoon.

Maybe it was a part of an average teenage life that actually managed to keep up with Emma Swan, but  _sometimes_  those little kisses before she would go off to stuff some food beneath her shirt, or Neal pretending to fawn over her fake baby bump to establish their cover would set her alight more than the big kiss in the front seat of the Bug after they pulled off a heist.

Not all the time, though. Private touches and physical intimacy in the back seat of the parked Bug, or when they managed to scheme into a vacant room Emma hoarded and held close to her heart like gold. Those were the moments that convinced her that she was worth something, that home wasn’t just a physical place, that it wasn’t a family that took one look at her and sent her away.

To seventeen year old Emma Swan, home was Neal. Home was in the way he looked at her when they managed to slow down long enough to enjoy each other’s company, the drag of his hands over her body, the way he looked at her like she was more than good enough for him.

It was stupid and wonderful and she was plain giddy with excitement when they started to plan for Tallahassee. She was excited to get the watches for Neal, because getting them meant that she could do this home thing for the rest of their lives. They could live on the beach and hold hands and he could do the thing where he’d run his thumb over hers and maybe her fake baby bump wouldn’t be so fake one day–

And when it all came crumbling down around her… 

Emma had thought she’d known what having the rug pulled out from under her felt like. The swoop in the gut, the fall, the crash landing.

This was infinitely worse. This was being  _pushed_  over and the fall not stopping until she crashed in prison holding a positive pregnancy test.

* * *

 

She got out of prison with the keys to the bug and not a clue what to do. Her parole officer gave her a few suggestions, including getting her GED and a job, so that’s what she did.

She worked and studied in her every waking movement to try to forget about the son she’d–

No, she hadn’t left him. She gave him his best chance.

(That wasn’t with her. Not when she had to decide whether she could afford to do laundry this week versus buying groceries, not when she was this broken thing that couldn’t even love herself, let alone a  _child_ –)

Years went by before she was able to exist without thinking about him every waking moment–wondering where he was, if he was happy, if he was placed with a good family. She knew the system, and figured he probably was. Families looking to adopt are always looking for  _babies_.

It got easier to forget, to push away the memory of his cries and lose herself in other things.

One night stands became par for the course. Initially, it hadn’t been easy. The only person she’d ever been with was Neal, so she was inexperienced but she tried to make up for it with enthusiasm.

Whoever she was sleeping with each night generally wasn’t looking for affection, and neither was she. They were using the other to mutually masturbate, and that was completely fine with Emma.

A couple of times, they tried to get affectionate.

One woman had tried to kiss her long after they’d both come down, and Emma had been out of her bed like a shot.

A man whose name she’d long forgotten had mistakenly thought that she’d planned to spend the night and tried to spoon behind her and a fit of itchiness had broken out across her skin so violently that she’d shivered. She’d forgotten her socks and her phone she was in such a hurry to leave.

Sex, while nice, was really only something she did when her own fingers and toys weren’t enough to satisfy her. There was no ulterior motive.

Alone became the default of her existence. Her job was almost entirely done by herself, and she would go home each night to an empty apartment.

* * *

 

So when she starts this thing with Killian, she’s wretchedly out of practice.

He’s so good about letting her take the lead, but she can tell he catches himself when he moves to take her hand, when it seems like he wants to sway in and kiss her but instead steps back and grins at her.

It’s nice but there’s just–

It’s not like she’s got a phobia of it. She’s just not good at it. She kisses him, tries to put forth just as much effort into this thing that he seems to be. But sometimes she still feels that itch.

She’s sure she wants to go for this, knows that she wants to give this thing between them a fighting chance. She just–she hates that she can’t just do this. Emma is a woman who dives in headfirst and assumes she’ll figure it out along the way. She’s not used to  _not_  being able to figure it out.

“Was Milah good at this?” she asks one day. She’s been wondering–if she’d carried over habits from her last relationship, he must’ve carried over some from his.

“How do you mean?”

They are sitting across from each other at Granny’s, and they’d been holding hands until they’d walked through the door to the establishment. Emma had been the one to let go, and it wasn’t–

It wasn’t like she was ashamed of him, she just… she didn’t know how to do this anymore.

She scratches her wrist absentmindedly. “Like… I don’t know. Holding hands. Kissing.” 

He hums in understanding. “Ah, physical manifestations of affection?” She nods, and he replies, “Aye. Milah was a pirate through and through. Liked to stake her claim on me. A possessive woman, she was.”

“Do you–” She feels almost embarrassed, but she needs to know. “Do you miss it? Being with someone who wasn’t afraid to… do all that stuff?” The scratching at her wrist intensifies. She knows that he notices, but he doesn’t comment.

He answers, “Love, it’s been nigh upon three hundred years since I was with Milah. I can no more compare my relationship with her to ours than I imagine you can to what you shared with Baelfire.”

Her brow furrows. “You just sometimes do this thing. It seems like you don’t even notice it, and you move towards me, or reach for me, or whatever and then you stop. Like you’re catching yourself.”

He laughs softly, and reaches out to take her hand, pulling it away from where the skin around her flower tattoo was going red. “Swan, that’s not a holdover from times long-passed. It’s simply because I want you.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. She is saved from having to make further immediate comment when Ruby arrives to deliver their food.

It gets a little easier after that; when he reaches out for her, she makes the effort to reach back, even if it’s just to squeeze his hand and let go. She makes sure to kiss him when she leaves him behind.

She wants him to know that she’s  _trying_.

She doesn’t feel the itch often, anymore, so she takes that as a good sign.

And it’s nice. She can’t and certainly won’t deny that this kind of intimacy with him is nice. Since Neverland, he’s been the only person outside of her immediate family members who she’s been able to trust implicitly. She’s always been more of an “actions speak louder than words” type of girl, and she likes being able to show him how much he means to her without having to say it.

* * *

 

After their date, he’s much freer with initiating affection. When he reaches out, he doesn’t try to stop himself. When he leans in to kiss her, he doesn’t hold back.

It’s kind of stupid how much she likes it, and it harkens back to a time before she was so jaded about romantic relationships, when she had little fear about putting her heart into someone’s hands.

“Remember when you said that you didn’t compare us to what you had with Milah?” Emma asks him as they walked side by side along the pier. She brushes against him every so often, and a part of her aches to reach out, but she keeps her hands solidly in her pockets, and he doesn’t try to initiate.

“What of it?”

“You said that you couldn’t compare it, and that I probably couldn’t either and it’s just–I do. I do compare our relationship to what I had with Neal. I try not to. I kinda promised you I wouldn’t when I said that I was tired of living in the past. I am tired of it, but it just sometimes manages to hang onto me no matter how hard I try to shake it off.”

He pauses before he answers, “It’s understandable, I suppose. I have hundreds of years between losing my first love and my relationship with you. You have had not even a few months.”

She runs her free hand through her hair. “I guess. But after I found him again, I never–” she cuts herself off with a broken sigh. “We were never going to be anything again. There was too much that I never said, and I never told Henry or my parents what actually happened with us. Now they’ve named my brother after him and Henry can remember his father as a hero, and I’m not going to mess that up.”

She sees his jaw tic. “Your past isn’t a burden you should be forced to carry in anguished solitude.”

“I told  _you_.”

“I’m not your family,” he says, far too carelessly, and her heart seizes.

She takes his hand firmly in hers, drawing them to a stop. “You’re–” she swallows hard, but she has to do this because people have been leaving him for as long as they’ve been leaving her and she won’t do that to him. “You’re part of it. I meant it when I said I can’t lose you too.”

He smiles softly, and she gets the sense that he doesn’t hear those affirmations often enough. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be in the reformed villains club–always trying to shake off the terrible reputation their previous selves left in their wake. She sees it every day with Regina, with Killian.

She resolves herself to say it more often. She adds, “I just don’t want you worrying about… about that.”

He kisses the top of her head. “Don’t worry about me, Swan. You’ve plenty of alternative repositories for your concerns with Elsa and the Snow Queen running about. However,” She sees him shifting gears, his eyebrow cocking, voice going gravelly, and she knows exactly what’s coming, “if you’d like me to distract you from your heroic responsibilities, I’d be more than happy to oblige.”

It makes her laugh, but she’s understood his tactics almost as long as she’s known him.

Deflect. Disarm with charm and innuendo. Keep them away from what’s really in your heart.

She’s used similar ploys more times than she can count.

It hurts more than she cares to admit, so instead she pulls him closer, their chests barely brushing, and leans her forehead against his neck.

She can’t always tell him. Emma Swan has only so many grand declarations that she can make, but she can at least do this. If she can’t tell him, at least she can show him.

He leans into her, sighs softly, and her heart lightens.

* * *

 

Her hands are shaking. Her body is numb. She makes her way up the stairs of the clock tower unfeeling.

Why can’t she stop her hands from shaking?

He’s on his knee still, and he’s holding his heart in his hands and she’s hit in the chest with how close she’d come to losing him again.

She arrives at the top of the stairs and this time the itch is spreading across her skin because she  _isn’t_  touching him and she falls onto the floor with him and throws her arms around his neck.

The itching stops, and she’s just focused on holding him as tightly as she can. She presses her face into his cheek, and she can feel him shaking too.

“Careful there, love,” he says, and that’s when she remembers the heart between them and she pulls back.

It’s beautiful. Terrifying, because it should never have come out of his chest in the first place, but beautiful, because there’s hints of darkness bleeding through the red, but it’s so bright. The red  _shines_  around the darkness and she raises her hands to it without thinking, and once she realizes, drops them back to her sides.

He smiles at her, reassurance and something so warm she wants to thank her lucky stars he’s still with her. He gestures with his heart, and she realizes he’s encouraging her to take it. “Probably much better off in magical hands than my own,” he says.

“Yeah,” she agrees quietly. “Yeah.”

She takes it gentler than she’s taken anything in her life, and he just lets her, and it almost scares her how much he trusts her, but there’s that warmth in his eye again, accompanied by a familiar twinkle. “It’s always belonged to you, anyway.”

She’s discovered a lot about herself since she’s been with him, but she knows she’s not ready for that. 

“I’d rather put it back where it belongs,” she answers.

He seems to understand (always, always understands) and when they make their way across the street, Emma doesn’t let go of him once.

* * *

 

She returns from the Author’s house feeling powerful. She has a new mission, and one that doesn’t involve defeating villains or watching anyone she cares about nearly die. Trying to give Regina her happy ending feels like the kind of mission the Savior  _should_  be on, and so she feels  _good_.

She knows she won’t be getting over the image of Killian collapsing any time soon, but now that she knows it’s back in his chest, has the memory of him backing her against the wall and kissing her ( _how did she not notice sooner how different his kisses were_ ), the smile he gave her… she doesn’t know what it is about him, but whenever she’s near him, he makes this whole Savior thing seem less like a burden and more like something she’s meant to do. Something that she’s more than happy to do.

(The image of Regina’s hopeful grin stays with her, the image of Henry’s pride of her accepting the mantle of Savior in it’s purest form.)

To have Killian to come home to after all that makes it that much sweeter.

When she knocks on his door at Granny’s, she’s not planning on making her intentions for this evening a secret.

She’d planned on simply attacking him as soon as she made it through the door, that he’d be “more than happy to oblige,” but once she sees him, it all comes rushing back.

He invites her in, and as soon as he closes the door, she gathers him close to her so that she can feel his heart beating.

“I know it still seemed like you had a heart when you didn’t,” she explains quietly. “I could still feel it, I just–I keep telling myself I should have been able to feel the difference.”

He pulls back, a thumb carefully brushing her cheek. “You had no reason to suspect–”

She shakes her head, “But I did. You managed to warn me at Granny’s, and I–I knew that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what and I put other things in front of you and you almost died.”

“I can hardly expect to come at the top of your list of priorities, Swan,” he says. “You’ve a family, a son, responsibilities to this town that existed in your life far before I did.”

“Don’t do that,” she pleads.

“What?”

“Constantly… I don’t know,  _devalue_  yourself like that. You’re important. You act like I could just go on if you…”

“Couldn’t you?” he asks, and she hates the sound of his brokenness and she knows he’s just as fucking broken as she is.

“I don’t want to ever have to,” she admits, and there it is.

She realizes after she’s said it that she’s completely given him the power to break her. She’s given him the exact same fragile piece of her that she’d given up so long ago; the piece that had been so thoroughly shattered that she’d hidden it and built an impregnable wall around it.

She’s just handed it over, and completely on accident no less, and she couldn’t think of a better person to give it to.

When he kisses her, there’s this sweetness there that she doesn’t remember from their previous kisses, but maybe she just wasn’t paying close enough attention.

She vows to do that more often too.


End file.
